Of Great Men
by XoX-queen-bee-XoX
Summary: Sometimes they blamed their feelings for each other on self loathing, other times on loathing everyone else. Once in a while though, they wondered if this hadn't become some kind of haven from the excess loathing going on outside their imperfect shelter
1. Prologue

_**I've never written a Harry Potter fanfic before. I've always been a little intimidated by the thought of it, but here I am now, writing one. The prologue is short. he chapters will be longer.**_

_**This is Draco/Hermione. It's set in some kind of alternate reality, where the war didn't end and it's still going. Everyone's older, in their twenties or so, and the war has been going this entire time. Lots of people are dead, everyone's a little crazy blah, blah, etc.**_

_**I hope you enjoy it.**_

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><p><strong>Of Great Men<strong>

_**Prologue**_

_The history of the world is but the biography of great men._

"Go on, ask me."

Her hair's wet, curling around her face, sticking to her cheeks, which are flushed and damp from the rain. A set of nail shaped gouges stand out vividly along the right side of her face, blood trickling sluggishly from them and sinking into her shirt. Her clothes are soaked, her jeans are dripping a puddle on the ground at her feet. Her cardigan is ripped to shreds, charred holes allowing the odd patch of badly burnt skin to peek through. Her shoes are covered in mud and her hands are unnaturally pale and blotchy from the cold. They're covered in blood too and he can't tell if it's hers or someone else. He can't tell which he wants it to be either. She doesn't look pretty or attractively dishevelled like the girls from films; she looks like a mess.

He wants to tell her she shouldn't be here, because in theory, he should be killing her on sight. He knows at least some of that blood is from someone on his side and he knows that the fact that she's here means that someone else isn't coming back to the manor that night. He knows he should be angry and he is; only for all the wrong reasons. So he doesn't tell her she shouldn't be here.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Not that." She shakes her head, steps closer. He thinks he should move away, but he doesn't really want to, so he stays. "Don't ask me that. Ask me what I want."

He swallows hard, eyes drifting over her shirt again. Her visible skin is a mottled red, pink and white, the top layers beginning to peel away from the less damaged skin beneath it. The left side of her bra is hanging out from the shreds that remain of her shirt and cardigan. He recognises it; it's the same one she was wearing the first time.

"What do you want?" he asks gruffly, although he can think of a thousand other questions he would rather ask her.

"I want you to mean it when you ask me a question, Draco," she says harshly, shoving her wand into her pocket. She seems blissfully unaware of the second degree burns covering her upper body.

"Who did this?" He can't stop the anger flaring up in his voice. The fact that he thinks he already knows the answer to his question doesn't make it any easier to ask.

She ignores him, like the stubborn bitch she can be sometimes, and steps closer again. He doesn't move away, although they're practically chest to chest now, the door to one of the random buildings in the random village that she's apparated them to inches away from his back. He towers over her, but he might as well have been kneeling down for all the difference that seemed to make to her.

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me!" he hisses back.

"Ask me again."

"For Christ's sake, Hermione-"

"Please," she says, and for the first time he hears a hint of begging in her voice. The ground under their feet crunches as she shifts her weight from foot to foot. Her hand comes up, touches his chest, fists into the lapels of his thick winter coat. It's only then that it occurs to him to give it to her, although it seems a rather useless move now, because he knows she'll only toss it off.

"Jesus," he says and he shakes his head and slides the coat off anyway, just because he feels like he should. "What do you want then?"

"Change sides," she says. Her breathing is still a little off, her shoulders heaving as she tries to get it back under control. He can feel her bones jutting out through her too thin skin when he tugs the coat onto her shoulders. To his surprise she doesn't shake him off.

"You said you wouldn't ask that." His voice is low, verging on a growl, because he's somewhere between annoyed with her and livid with his own allies. Her eyes are wide, the only part of her body that isn't marred by some kind of blood or water or dirt. Even now, when they're asking something impossible of him, he still can't help but remember how much he's always loved her eyes.

She shrugs and shakes her head like that's meant to be an answer or an apology or something. Her eyes are fierce though, defiant.

He shakes his head right back at her, looking down at the ground because despite himself he feels guilty. "You can't ask that."

When he looks back at her she's still staring at him with those fierce eyes, so intently he almost can't take it. Then suddenly something snaps.

"Fine," she says, her tone unreadable, although he thinks he detects the slightest hint of desperation; a tone that on her has always scared him. She puts her hand on his chest, pushing him back roughly into the wall, her fingers dig into his torso through the thick fabric of his shirt. Then she kisses him, her lips aggressively pushing against his, her teeth scraping his lips. The kiss is frantic and greedy and so rough it almost hurts. It hurts and he loves it.

When he tugs his face away from hers he can hardly breathe, his heart racing in his chest like it's trying to beat its way out of him. A piece of her hair has attached itself to his cheek and it hanging there, stretched between them like a bedraggled bridge. Her breathing's just as bad as his – maybe worse. Her skin is seared and blistering in places.

"You need to go to hospital," he says.

"Shut up," she says, so he does and instead he just kisses her again.

And so Draco Malfoy fucks Hermione Ganger in an alleyway in some deserted muggle village while a million miles away a war rages on between their two sides. And all he thinks about is how pointless it was giving her his jacket when less than a minute later he's ripped it back off her shoulders again and left it lying in a puddle on the wet ground.


	2. Chapter 1

_Six Months Earlier_

Everything is black. Her eyes are locked shut, her body forced into a rigid freeze frame on the sodden ground thanks to a curse she didn't see coming. Blood is slowly seeping from a gash on the right side of her face. Occasional showers of green seep through her closed eyelids but beyond that there's nothing but blackness.

She's not sure how long she lies there, panting and trying in vain to break the curse so she can see something again. Screams regularly break the silence, some she recognises and some she doesn't. There were six of them in the sky when they were brought down, but the longer she lies there and listens, the more indication she hears that those numbers are dwindling.

Finally, after an age of terror lying on the frozen concrete waiting to be hit by one of those green showers of sparks, the curse wears off. She opens her eyes just in time to see a writhing, screaming Seamus fall still on the ground. She can't tell if he's dead or just passed out from the pain, but from her vantage point it doesn't looks like he's breathing. It only takes her a second to realise she's the last member of the order left in the alleyway aside from Seamus. It only takes her another second to hear heavy footsteps coming towards her.

In a flurry of movement she jerks upright, scrabbling around in the puddles to search for a wand she hasn't seen since she fell. Just as her hands find something long and smooth she's wrenched backwards by some unseen force, across the alleyway, her flight halted when she smacks violently into the wall. Her head ricochets backwards and bounces off the wall with a painful crack. She can feel more blood begin to trickle from her scalp.

Jerking her head upright despite a new pain in her neck, she sees Malfoy, wand pointed directly at her, a bitter grimace on his face. Her wand lies ten feet away, rolling in small circles in the shallow puddle of rain water. There's no one else in the alley, aside from three bodies, all lying motionless on the ground.

Harry, who was with them when they fell, is nowhere to be seen and Neville, Ron and George have disappeared along with him. If she has nothing else to be thankful for, at least she has that. They didn't get him, or at least she doesn't think they did.

The sleet smacks into the side of her face, stinging her cheeks as she hangs helplessly from the bricks. Slowly he advances on her, their eyes locked and despite the fear and disappointment warring within her she can't help but hold his gaze, out of a last vestige of pride which won't leave her, even now as she's seconds away from death.

"What are you waiting for, Malfoy?" she hisses at him, refusing to beg although she knows it would be the wise thing. Her heart is beating wildly in her chest, the adrenaline from the fight still coursing through her. Maybe it's that which makes her entreat the man she hates more than anyone else to kill her or maybe it's simply another attempt to cling to some pride.

He doesn't answer although his steps falter slightly, stopping altogether when he's less than two meters away from her. His wand is mere inches from her throat. His hand is shaking, his teeth clenched tightly together, eyes narrowed to slits. His blonde hair is plastered to his pale face and there's something in his eyes that speaks of pure anger, and something else which she thinks might be confusion.

She doesn't understand the expression, but she still doesn't look away because no matter what happens they've won the fight now. Harry's safe, off somewhere with Neville and it'll be weeks before they have another shot at him. Two of the death eaters are lying dead and bloodied on the ground. Even if she dies, she's still done it for a reason.

"Fuck," Malfoy mutters suddenly, looking away from her for the first time since their eyes met. He flicks his wand silently and she feels the invisible restraints around her hands and feet disappear, dropping her to the ground in an unceremonious heap. Then he turns and walks away, kicking her wand a little further across the alley as he goes.

"What are you doing?" she yells after him, watching him turn back on his foot and clutch his wand a little more tightly, eyeing her with an unreadable expression. "Just do it!"

"I'm not going to fucking kill you, alright Granger?" he yells back, his tone verging on exasperation, like he's having to explain something very simple to someone very stupid. Turning again, he shakes his head, adding a much quieter, "Just go home."

With those words and a loud crack, he disappears from the alley. A slight ripple in the water at his feet and a pain in the back of her head from the wall are the only signs he was even there. She sits on the ground for a long time, confused and cold and aching, until she starts to shiver and her fingers are turning blue. Then, in complete silence, she climbs to her feet, picks up her wand, walks over to the unquestionably dead Seamus and takes him home to Grimmauld Place.

And this is how it begins.

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><p>She's not sure why, but when they ask her what happened that night she doesn't tell them everything. She lies to herself and says it's because it's not important, but she knows that's not true. It's maybe the most important thing that's happened to her in a while now. Maybe it's actually because she thinks they won't believe her or maybe she thinks they will and it might change things too much. She doesn't even tell Harry or Ron, the first because he's never there anyway, always off fighting one war or another and the latter because he's changed too much and she's having trouble dealing with it. Instead she just keeps it to herself and tries not to think about it too much, because there are far more pressing matters at hand.<p>

They bury Seamus almost straight away and his funeral is like a memorial for all of the ones gone before him, because he's the first one to be brought home in a long time now. She cries, for all of them and for him, because it's the first time she's seen anyone tortured to death and it was horrible. And partly she cries just to make sure that she still remembers how to cry.

Ginny stands beside her, dry eyed and expecting, staring at the space opposite them that Harry isn't filling because once again he isn't there. In a sick kind of way, seeing it almost makes her glad things didn't work out between her and Ron. She doesn't like the idea of sitting up every night wondering if your child's going to have a father or not.

It's strange, but for some reason watching Ron touch Fleur Delacour's younger sister the way he used to touch her doesn't make her feel sick or bitter or lonely like she thinks it would. Instead she's just happy for him, which might be worse because she's sure you're meant to feel something more than that about someone you used to be in love with. Maybe it's because she is still in love with him, just in a different way, but she's glad he's got something to hold onto during this war. She still likes to see him get what he wants, even when it's not her.

The next one to go down is Cho Chang. Hermione's in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, drinking tea with Molly when Dean stumbles in through the door, blood spattered across his shirt.

"Cho's dead," all he says when a worried Molly rushes to his side and helps him to a seat.

She wants to vomit, simply because the people she always thought were untouchable, the people she grew up with and laughed with and learned with have started dropping like flies on both sides now. She can't help but wonder when it's going to be her turn. She can't imagine it'll be all that long now. Lately she tries her best to make the most of things. If only there was more time and less conflict, maybe she might do a better job of it.

The problem is that she can't envisage an end to the confrontation anytime soon, and honestly she's not even sure she wants to. Without it she's not convinced she knows who she is anymore.


End file.
